


Twelve Nights

by florencedrunk (spokenitalics)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Bucky, Bottom Steve, Bucky's POV through the years, First Time(s), Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reunion Sex, Sharing a Bed, Smut, Top Bucky, Top Steve, canon AU, post-serum Steve, pre-serum steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-01-31 01:32:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12665526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spokenitalics/pseuds/florencedrunk
Summary: Hands brushing against smooth ivory, Bucky explores the Steve's body — his arms, his legs, his chest, where his heart is beating so fast it's a surprise it hasn't burst out of his rib cage yet."Are you scared?" he asks, whispers. "It's alright if you are."Steve swallows nervously. "Are you?""Hell, yeah."Or, twelve nights spread across eighty years, from first time to first time.





	Twelve Nights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Combination_NC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Combination_NC/gifts).



> I've written about these two a lot — _a lot_ — but every time I do, I find that I have something new to say about them, about their relationship, about what they mean to me. I've also been wanting to write something smutty for quite some time now, and this idea of an out-of-order story has been haunting me forever, so I decided to kill three birds with one stone and this came out. Enjoy!
> 
> Thanks to the awesome [aurilly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly) for being my beta for this fic!

 

**1\. BROOKLYN, 1934**

It's still dark when Bucky wakes up, and for a second he thinks he's still dreaming. Under the blankets, Steve's back is plastered against his chest, their legs intertwined, their hands resting where they wouldn't normally dare. As his senses awaken, Bucky remembers more and more about the previous night, about how he had to convince Steve to share the bed to keep him from catching another cold. That had seemed like a good idea at the time, and, well, it worked. There's just one problem: his own hard cock grinding against Steve's ass.

Just as Bucky realizes what's happening, Steve's voice echoes in the room. "Buck—" he calls, the name dying in a soft gasp. "Bucky."

"Tell me to stop and I will," he says, leaving small kisses under his ear. "Tell me to stop."

"Don't," Steve says. "Don't stop."

Hands brushing against smooth ivory, Bucky explores the boy's body — his arms, his legs, his chest, where his heart is beating so fast it's a surprise it hasn't burst out of his rib cage yet.

"Are you scared?" he asks, whispers. "It's alright if you are."

Steve swallows nervously. "Are you?"

"Hell, yeah."

Steve laughs, nervousness leaving his body all at once, and it's suddenly too much. Bucky grinds faster, harder, and his hand moves between Steve's legs, where he finds a cock just as hard as his own. It doesn't take long before they both come, an explosion resounding through their bodies and their souls.

In the darkness, they find each other's eyes, each other's smiles, each other's lips. Bucky has kissed a few girls before, caressing their blushing cheeks while whispering sweet nothings that dissolved into giggles, but he's never felt something quite like this, quite like this drunkenness that makes the blood in his veins sing out in longing for something that's right in front of him. The more he tastes Steve, the more he wants to taste him. The more touches him, to more he wants to touch.

"What now?" Steve asks, his big and his voice trembling.

Bucky kisses him one last time. "We'll worry about that tomorrow."

 

* * *

 

**7\. SIBERIA, 1964**

Twenty-eight little girls running away from an orphanage on fire, and the Red Room welcoming them with the promise of a better life.

("You have my blood running in your veins," the Winter Soldier snarls. "Your failures are my failures, and I _never_ fail.")

Twenty-eight young women with memories that don't match and skin that will never grow old, with weapons in their hands and on their lips, and voices that never speak their mind.

("Shoot," he orders.

_Click._

_Bang._

She doesn't even flinch when the body falls on the floor.

"Well done.")

Twenty-eight dolls trapped in a blood-stained dollhouse, like puppets waiting for their strings to be cut. What would they do if that happened, other than fall to the ground like lifeless corpses, unable to choose for themselves?

(She's the youngest of them all, the smallest. Sometimes, the others pick on her. She smiles, when that happens, bares her teeth like a hungry animal and punches and scratches and spills as much blood as she loses.

"You're not Russian," she says as he patches her up.

"I don't think so, no," he answers.

"Where are you from, then?"

"I don't remember."

"You're lucky," she concludes. "You've got nowhere to miss.")

 

* * *

 

**2\. BROOKLYN, 1936**

With every kiss, Steve tastes of something different. This time it's sugar and milk, so sweet it makes Bucky's teeth ache. But it's not just his lips, he realizes as he kisses Steve on the corner of his mouth and along his jaw, on his neck and on his chest and on his stomach, and down, down, down... He pushes Steve on the bed and kneels between his legs, taking him in his mouth. Steve lets out a moan that turns into a laugh — and not just any moan, but Bucky's name, or the first syllable, anyway. Bucky pulls away for a moment, pulls Steve down for a kiss. (Honey and coffee and the best kind of whiskey.)

"You like that?" he asks.

"Yes," Steve breathes out.

"Yes?" he repeats, just to tease him.

Steve rolls his eyes. "Stop asking questions and suck my cock."

Bucky obeys, trying to be slower, to make it last for as long as possible. But he can feel the blood pulsing under his tongue, and Steve's hand is firm on the back of his head, commanding him to go faster and faster. The jolt comes a second before the warmth fills his mouth. He grips Steve's thighs and swallows as much of him as he can.

Steve falls down onto the bed. "I love you," he says with his eyes to the ceiling, maybe even closed, and then again, looking straight into Bucky's eyes. "I love you, Buck."

He climbs onto the bed and onto Steve, digging his elbows into the mattress to prop himself up. They kiss again. It's sloppier, lazier, interrupted by smiles and laughter. Steve tastes of Steve, and Bucky does too.

"I love you, Stevie."

 

* * *

 

**10\. BUCHAREST, 2016**

Normal people miss grandparents who died when they were too young to actually remember them, or places they've visited only in their dreams, but it's different for Bucky. His dreams are rarely only dreams, and most days he wakes up with some memory that wasn't there the night before. His past life is coming back to him in bits and pieces, never in the right order, never vivid enough to make actual sense. But even if slowly and unevenly, he's remembering.

("You're going to pay for this," Steve tells him just a second before going back to throwing up his soul.

"I'm sor—" Bucky begins, interrupted by his own laughter. He can't stop, he just can't. His sides are beginning to hurt. "I'm sorry, Stevie."

"I can see that, jerk."

"I am, though, really," he says, eventually. "Are you okay?"

"I've been better."

"You shouldn't have come with me."

"You shouldn't have dared me.")

The more he remembers, the more he realizes he's lost — if "lost" is the right word. All those things were taken from him, stripped away from his memory, burned away from his mind. Most days, he's not sure he's even a person. Maybe he's just what's left, what Hydra didn't erase, what was useful to them.

("Don't look at me like that," Steve tells him from the bed. He's so pale it looks like he's fading into the sheets.

"Like what?"

"Like I'm about to break. Like I'm weak."

"I don't think you're weak," Bucky says. "You wouldn't still be alive if you weren't as strong as you are, or as stubborn.")

The market is almost as noisy and crowded as his head. It's also the only place he feels comfortable. No one in the whole city knows his name, what he's done, what he's been through. He's not Bucky Barnes when he talks to the old lady selling plums. He's not the Winter Soldier when that kid in her dad's arms smiles at him. He's not the prisoner, not the assassin, not whatever the news calls him, not what Steve thinks he is, not what those twenty-eight women remember him as. He's no one.

("You're a very good dancer," the girl tells him. She smells of roses, and Marlboros, and wine as fine and French as her. "But why do I have the impression you'd rather be dancing with someone else?"

"I'm sorry—"

"Don't be," she says, a sly smile appearing on her face. "So would I."

"You're a better actress than I am, then."

"Or just better at noticing the way you're looking at that blondie over there." She gives a look to Steve, sitting on the other side of the bar with the others. "And the way he's looking back at you." Bucky doesn't say anything, and she continues, "I had someone who looked at me like that, once. I still remember the way her eyes felt on my skin..."

"Was she good at dancing?"

"You're almost as good as her.")

 _I was born the 10th of March 1917 in Brooklyn,_ he writes in his journal when he's back at the apartment — home, he should begin to call it. _My mom's name was Winifred, my dad's was George. They both died before the war. I had a little sister, Rebecca. I think she's dead too._

He writes and writes and writes. About his childhood and the war and about what came after. About the Germans and the Russians and the Americans and about all the people they made him kill. About the man he sees in the mirror and the one he sees in his dreams. About the girl with bright red hair and about the way the rifle felt in his hands. He writes and writes and writes. He doesn't want to forget ever again.

 

* * *

 

**3\. BROOKLYN, 1942**

The first time Bucky wears his uniform, it suddenly becomes real.

"You're leaving," Steve says, fixing the collar of Bucky's jacket. "You're leaving me behind."

"I don't want to go."

"I know," he says, hooking a finger in Bucky's belt. "I know you don't."

"And I wouldn't want you with me."

"Why not?"

Bucky goes to answer, but—

"No, don't say it. Don't even think it," Steve interrupts. "I will see you again. I will."

Bucky smiles, or forces himself to. "I'm gonna miss you," he says, kissing him. "Let me see you. All of you."

He unbuttons Steve's shirt and lets it fall to the floor. Steve kicks off his shoes and his pants, and there he is, naked and pristine and so beautiful it hurts. Bucky kisses him, tongue exploring the cavern of his mouth. The tips of his fingers go down his arms and his sides and his back and then inside of him, where he finds him already wet and ready — he prepared himself.

"You punk—"

"Fuck me," Steve orders. "I want you to fuck me."

"Turn around, then."

"No," he says, a hand on Bucky's chest. "I want to see you."

Guided by Steve, Bucky walks backward until his back hits the wall, and then goes down until he's sitting on the floor. He pushes his pants down to his knees, and suddenly Steve is on his lap and all around him, tight and warm and all he needs in the world. This is what he wants to remember, what he wants to think about when he's in Europe, waiting for someone to kill him: Steve riding him, deep and good, with a cocky smile on his face and Bucky's hat on his head, rising and falling on his lap, taking all of him inside of him.

They suffocate their moans in kisses, and Bucky finds himself unable to move, to do anything but let himself sink into the pool of blue that are Steve's eyes. He inhales the way their smells mix together, and revels in the sounds that die in Steve's throat. His fingers dig into Steve's flesh, soft and pure and _his_ , if only for just this moment. He's lost — so lost in Steve that it's only by chance that he remembers he probably shouldn't stain his brand new uniform with semen.

He leans forward, easing Steve's back onto the floor. Steve doesn't miss a beat, hooking his legs around Bucky's hips. He smiles again. (Jesus Christ, Bucky loves that smile.)

"You're the best fucking thing that ever happened to me, you know that?" he tells Steve, pushing harder and harder inside of him.

Steve doesn't answer, doesn't have to. He arches his back and lets out one last moan as he shoots streaks of white all over his own stomach and chest. Bucky looks down at him, breathless and wrecked and burning as bright as ever, and that's all it takes for him to come too.

 

* * *

 

**8\. PARIS, 1979**

She smiles when the scientist finally stops moving, his hands falling to his sides, leaving the blood free to gush out of the cut on his throat. Without taking her eyes off the corpse, she walks closer to the Soldier, reaching into the pocket of his jacket to produce a white handkerchief which she uses to clean her dagger.

Once the blade is back in her place against her thigh under her dress, she smiles up at him and says, "Tell me I did well."

He offers her his arm. "We have a party to attend now, don't we?"

Her smile doesn't drop as they make their way down the stairs. "You don't like being undercover."

"I don't."

"Why?" she asks, steering them towards the dance floor.

"I prefer to watch my victims from afar," he whispers in her ear.

"I like to feel the warmth pouring out of their bodies," she tells him, hand traveling down his back. "It's more... intimate."

"I suppose there's a reason they call you the Black Widow."

"Of course there is. It's the same one they call you the Winter Soldier," she says, caressing his ass. "They want to be sure we know we're not real people."

 

* * *

 

**4\. AZZANO, 1943**

The kiss tastes of tears — happy tears, desperate tears. Outside the tent, the forest is howling, and like a wolf to the full moon, Bucky lets out a plea.

"I'm alive," he says. "Make me feel alive."

Soon, he's on his hands and knees, only half naked, with one of Steve's hands on his mouth as he pushes into him.

"I couldn't believe I'd lost you," Steve tells him, forehead pressed against the back of his neck. "I just couldn't believe you were—"

"I'm not," he manages to get out. "I'm here."

"You're here."

"I'm here."

If he repeats it enough, maybe he'll end up believing it. If Steve's believes it, maybe it'll be enough.

_I'm here. I'm here. I'm here._

Steve buries a groan in Bucky's shoulder as he comes inside him, biting into it softly enough not to break the skin. He stays there until Bucky comes too. But morning is already upon them, and they have a war to fight. There's no time to rest in each other's embrace, to explore all the ways their bodies have changed since the last time they were together, to lick away all the pain they've been through.

"I love you," they both say. (Sweet and bitter and necessary.)

 

* * *

 

**11\. WASHINGTON D.C., 2016**

"I always knew the security was rubbish in this place," Peggy Carter says when she sees him in her room.

"I told the nurse I was your nephew."

"Was he too distracted by those eyes of yours to notice the metal arm?"

He laughs. "You're not surprised to see me."

"Steve told me he's been looking for you," she explains, gesturing for him to sit on the chair next to her bed. "I'm glad he finally found you."

"He didn't," he says. "I came here on my own. He doesn't know I'm back."

"Why?"

"Because I have a question for you."

"I'll be glad to answer it, but that's not what I meant: why doesn't he know you're back?"

"That's what I wanted to ask you," he starts. "You're one of the few people left who knew Bucky Barnes, and I need to know if... if I'm him."

"Of course you aren't," she says, taking his hand — his metal hand, the one that kills. "And neither am I the same woman I was in 1945. These last seventy years have changed all of us, in one way or another."

"I've killed people."

"So have I."

"I was Hydra."

"So was I, it seems. The only difference is that you didn't have a choice in the matter, while I invited the serpent into our nest."

"It wasn't your fault."

"It sure as hell wasn't yours," she tells him. "And you saved Steve, didn't you? You broke through the program, you were stronger than them."

"That doesn't mean— that doesn't erase everything I've done."

"Of course it doesn't, but all of that has nothing to do with who you are, with who Bucky Barnes is."

"And who am I?"

"I can't tell you that. No one but yourself can."

"What do I do, then?"

"What everyone does," she says. "No one is born knowing who they are. All we can do is hope to live long enough to find out."

"So what? I just have to wait?"

"Not wait. Live, love, _be_."

"You make it sound easy."

"It's the hardest thing in the world, but also the best." She takes a small journal from her nightstand and rips a piece of paper out of it. There's and address written on it. "Now, listen to an old woman's advice and take this. I'm sure you'll know what to do with it."

 

* * *

 

**5\. LONDON, 1944**

"I saw you dancing with that French girl," Steve tells him, looking up from his sketchbook for a second.

They're in their room, alone, which they haven't been in what seems like forever. Everyone else went out to the bar to celebrate being still alive or whatever, but the two of them have devised a ritual of their own.

"Yeah, the French girl noticed," Bucky answers, stretching on the bed — the one that's supposed to be Steve's.

Steve's eyes widen immediately. "Wh-What did she say?"

"That she too had someone she would've rather been dancing with — _a girl_ ," Bucky explains. "Said she was a better dancer than me."

"And what did you tell her?"

"That you, on the other hand, are no match for her," he answers.

Steve gives Bucky one of those looks that mean he's going to either enjoy what comes next very much or hate it terribly. This time, fate seems to be in his favor, and the bed springs squeak as Steve lies down beside him.

"Dum Dum saw the scratches on my back the other day," he tells Bucky after a kiss. "I had to tell him they were branch marks from that time my parachute got caught in a tree."

"That's a terrible excuse! Did he believe you?"

"No," he confesses. "But Morita said he saw me with some nurse back at the camp, so they think it was her."

"What were you doing with some nurse back at the camp?"

"Fucking her, of course," he answers half a second before bursting into laughter. "I was just making sure she stitched that wound on your side."

"It was just a scratch."

"Yeah, and so were the ones you left on my back," Steve says. "And they brought us enough trouble, as you can see."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Steve tells him. "I'm sure you'll find a way or two to make up for it."

"Oh, shut the fuck up, punk."

 

* * *

 

**9\. BUCHAREST, 2015**

The television is a bright window into a world he's seen too much of. In the darkness of the apartment, the lurid screen sucks him inside tragedies and scandals and stories of cities with streets that are too clean and people that are just too beautiful, too undamaged to be really alive.

(Sometimes, he sees himself inside the little box. The camera is shaking, and all he can hear is people screaming. But he's there on the highway, rifle in his hands as the red-haired woman runs away from him. The Winter Soldier, they call him — never Bucky Barnes. Not that he's sure that's his real name, but it's what Rogers called him, and it's what he read in the museum, right under the photo of the man with the same face as him: James Buchanan Barnes, born 1917, died 1945.)

He finds the remote and switches channel, again and again, from repeated melodies to silent portraits of destruction, until he lands on a movie he's sure he's already seen. He closes his eyes. The colours weigh heavy on his eyelids. It's not pleasant, but better than the darkness, better than the void. Maybe he'll even manage to fall asleep.

A few minutes pass, and Scarlett O'Hara falls, but she never reaches the bottom of the stairs. Instead, the screen explodes with music and lights, and the words _BREAKING NEWS_ appear at the center of it. Bucky opens his eyes to see a city floating in the sky, and monstrous metal creatures crawling all over it. Some people are fighting them: a woman with red eyes, a man with gray hair, a blond man with a hammer, and _him_. Captain America is barely more than a blue-red-white spot running across the devastated landscape.

"Steve," he says. Or maybe he doesn't say it, he just thinks it. Either way, the name echoes throughout the room and inside his skull, returning to him as heavy as a broken promise — one that he doesn't even remember making.

 

* * *

 

**6\. SOMEWHERE IN AUSTRIA, 1945**

They don't know it's their last time together. Even if they did, it wouldn't change a thing. For them, every time is the last time.

The rock is cold against his back, but there's a warmth spreading inside of him as Steve comes. Bucky leans his head against Steve's and tightens his legs around his hips. They could stay like this forever, no need for food or water and anything else, until time runs out and the world crumbles around them, and even after that too.

 

* * *

 

**12\. BROOKLYN, 2016**

He knocks on the door and almost hopes no one will come to answer it. This was a bad idea. No, this was a _terrible_ idea. What's he even thinking? He should turn around and leave. Leave the city and the country and the state. He should go back to Bucharest and—

"Bucky," Steve says. He's gripping the door, as if trying to hold himself in place, not to tackle him to the ground. (Bucky knows because he's trying not to do the same thing.)

"I heard you and those other two have been looking for me for some time, now," he says, crossing his arms. "I figured it was going to take you forever, so..."

"You're still as much of a jerk, then."

Bucky laughs, and Steve does too. And then they both stop. What now? What does he do? What does he say? Every trace of energy has left his body, and the inside of his skull is so hot that for a moment he's scared his brain is going to melt. He can't move, can't speak. He can't even think.

But he doesn't have to. Because Steve is there, and Steve hasn't stopped to think about his actions for one second in his entire life. And thank God for that. The moment before their lips touch dilates into a century, but Bucky still has barely any time to brace himself for the kiss, for the sheer power of it. It tastes like tears, just like all those years ago in Italy, and like that thing he's been missing for so, so long. And it's easy, so easy that it makes his bones shiver.

"Are you scared?" Steve asks, whispers. "It's alright if you are."

Bucky looks straight into those big blue eyes. "Are you?"

"More than I've ever been."

Bucky closes the distance between them again. (Old, like a tale told by the fire in the dead of night. New, like a dawn in a cloudless sky.) They move into the house and towards the bedroom, or at least that's where Bucky hopes they're headed. As they stumble from room to room they shed off their clothes, and with every piece of fabric that hits the floor, Bucky feels pounds and pounds lighter.

Eventually, Steve pulls away. He stares into Bucky's eyes for a second, and then ducks to kiss him on the cheek. It's tender and intimate and it burns black on his skin, only the first of a trail of fire going down his throat and his chest and towards his left shoulder. Steve doesn't kiss him there, not immediately. He noses the scars between the skin and the metal, waiting for Bucky to stop him. But Bucky doesn't, and so he continues.

Zola was a cruel, cowardly man, but he was also a genius, and Bucky finally has something to thank him for: he can feel Steve, his lips against the metal of his arm, his warmth against his own coldness. And he feels that warmth on his bicep and on his shoulder and on the red star. He feels it on the inside of his elbow and on his wrist and on his hand. He feels it on his fingers as Steve sucks on them.

"Ste— Stevie—" he tries to get out, but the name is lost in a moan.

"What is it, Buck?" Steve asks. "You like that?"

"Yeah."

"You want more?"

He nods. He just nods.

Steve smiles a smile that would fit the devil himself and dives between his legs, freeing Bucky of his underwear and taking him in his mouth. Bucky sees white for a moment, and then locks his eyes onto Steve's as his tongue goes up and down his cock, touching where he's most sensitive. He won't last long like this.

"S-Stop," he says. Steve pulls away immediately, cleaning his reddened lips with the back of his hand. "I want to fuck you, please."

Another smile, another kiss, and then Steve is lying on his back with his legs spread open, waiting. Bucky climbs over him, a finger sliding inside Steve's hole.

"No," Steve tells him. "Use the other one, the other hand."

 _The other hand,_ as in, the metal one.

Bucky stops, paralyzed by the request, by the ease wrapped around those words. He takes the bottle of lube Steve is offering him — a _half-empty_ bottle — and squeezes a dollop on his left hand. Steve moans as he takes his fingers in — only one, first, and then two and three.

"You're so good to me, Buck," he lets out in a groan. "So fucking good."

Seeing Steve like this, so undone in a way that he had almost feared he'd be able to see only in his dream is too much for Bucky. Just too much. He pulls his fingers out and pushes into Steve, who shudders under him. Again, Bucky understands him perfectly. They've both waited seventy years for this — to be together, to be whole again, to regain that feeling always in the back of their heads, like a memory never truly forgotten. And now that they've finally gotten here, they don't care about how sloppy it is, or about how it doesn't last that long. This is for all the times they couldn't kiss, or hold hands, or were too afraid to even look at each other. For all the nights they've spent apart, for all the days they've spent together, but always hidden. This is for them, for all the time they've waited, for all the pain they've suffered. This is _theirs_.

"What now?" Bucky asks a few minutes later, staring at the ceilings. "What happens now I'm back?"

Steve takes Bucky's hand and brings it to his lips, leaving a streak of kisses on the knuckles. "I'm done worrying about the future," he says. "Or the past. Or anything that isn't you and me and now."

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed reading this fic, please consider reblogging it on [tumblr](http://florencedrunk.tumblr.com/post/167883369167/twelve-nights-are-you-scared-he-asks-whispers)!


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